Filipino Migrant and Returnee Nurses Resisting and Adapting to the Pressures of Becoming “Ideal Migrants”

Abstract This paper scrutinizes the desirability and feasibility of return migration for Filipino male and female nurses, while considering “turning points”, factors such as natural disasters, here supertyphoon “Yolanda” or “Haiyan”, and/or family crises and changes in the family structure, which affect the migration trajectory. The Philippines has a long history of outward migration, more recently of female workers employed in the healthcare and domestic sectors: this longstanding phenomenon being encouraged by a “sophisticated infrastructure” which expects surplus workers to become “ideal migrants” — that is, compliant and aspirational. We take an intersectionality approach, considering gender, race, ethnicity, and other social divisions which place migrant and returnee nurses in (dis)advantageous positions, in order to explore the nurses’ own strategies of resistance and adaptation towards becoming “ideal” workers and sustaining the “ideal migrant” trajectory of upward social mobility. While the participants of this study had varied reactions towards the feasibility of permanent return, this paper offers policy recommendations on supporting the reintegration of returnee migrant nurses, providing a more nuanced understanding of circular and return nurse migration, and that of nurses’ negotiations and agency towards navigating their own and others’ expectations of being “ideal” migrants.